Making cancer glow away
How to track down tiny tumours
Jan 4th 2011
Dr. Norman Maitland of the Yorkshire Cancer Research Laboratory, in Harrogate, England, has recognized the issue that although when small cancerous tumors are small and easy to deal with, they are extremely difficult to detect; once they are large enough to be detected, they have often already spread to other tissues of the body and caused critical, deadly effects. Maitland used the glowing crystal jelly proteins from the 2008 Nobel prize winning extraction to program viruses such as stripped-down versions of HIV and an insect virus to produce crystal-jelly proteins. The viruses were programmed to produce this jelly when the team spliced a prostate-specific control sequence into their genetic material. The viruses were programmed to attach to and infect the tumors, in order to make them easier to see. Although when the team exposed tissue samples containing prostate cancer cells, the viruses successfully infected them and new cancer cells, the proteins glowed brightly, unfortunately, the proteins glowed green. The green light's frequency was too high to travel through human tissues and therefore, could not be seen outside of the human body. The team that won the Nobel prize for chemistry, however, provided Dr. Maitland and his team with a version of the protein that emits red light. Even so, the tumors illuminated by the red light were difficult to see without an extremely expensive specially developed camera that scans the body slice by slice. This "glow" technique may be available for clinical trials in five years. By then, the price of these $750,000 cameras may have declined. Given the necessary materials to successfully conduct the technique, early detection of cancerous tumors will be much easier to achieve and treat.
http://www.economist.com/node/17843620
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